This invention relates to organizing, categorizing, and linking World Wide Web search activities, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for identifying, categorizing, registering, and locating official brand and true company websites over a computer network.
Performing searches on the World Wide Web (WWW) has become a popular form of information gathering and retrieval. Search engines such as Yahoo®, Google®, and Altavista® allow individuals to search for URLs, web pages, websites, and other information on the Internet. Search results include references to uniform resource locator (URL) addresses of web pages and other data that satisfy the search criteria entered by the individual. One or more keywords can be provided by the user as the criteria of the search request.
Publishing information on the web is inexpensive as compared to other publishing channels such as printed media, radio, television, etc. As such, the amount of data available on the web has been growing and continues to expand at an amazing rate, resulting in almost limitless amounts of information on virtually any topic. There are, however, disadvantages resulting from this growth. Even a well-planned web search can return an overwhelming sea of contrary, deceptive, and confusing information. With the vast amount of published sites and links available, conducting accurate and successful searches usually requires some boolean-based search knowledge before meaningful and substantive information can be found. Generalized key word searches can produce thousands of documents and links containing the selected key word which has been flagged (and the costs incurred are often in direct proportion to their priority of listing) and retrieved by a search engine, often resulting in slow information retrieval, too much information, or contradictory or misleading information. Thus, for businesses, brand organizations, individuals, and government that are working to establish an Internet presence, existing search engine tools are often inadequate and sometimes abused.
In order to conduct business on the Internet a business owner must register a domain name, which translates the numeric IP address into a more recognizable form. Every domain name must be unique to avoid communication errors and they are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Historically, domain names were not ‘per se’ protectable as intellectual property. Anyone could register a domain name, variations of a name, and product names and services for an already-established trademark. In fact, many people have registered domain names with trademarks without direct or legal relationship to the trademark owners.
Other individuals purchased domain names that were subject to trademarks for the sole purpose of selling them for a profit or for diverting business from their rightful owners. These individuals were referred to as ‘cyber squatters’. Asking prices ranged from a few hundred dollars to a few million dollars, compared to the usual one hundred dollar fee for a two-year registration through a domain registration service.
For example, the domain name for MTV® was acquired by a former employee, effectively preventing the company from using it. In recent years this has changed. An individual who had registered panavision.com was forced to relinquish the domain name to Panavision, Inc. because the court found that the registrant had violated the Federal Trademark Dilution Act in the United States, despite the fact that a domain name was not considered to be a trademark. This has made it possible for trademark owners to obtain the domain names that contain their trademark names or variations of their trademark names.
A related issue involves individuals or adversaries of a company registering a domain name that is misleading or negatively reflects the company. As a result, many businesses have registered multiple variations of their domain name in order to prevent customers from using these domains to express their views on these companies. For example, Chase Manhattan Bank acquired the domains Chasesucks.com, IhateChase.com, and ChaseStinks.com. Unfortunately, this has not been successful in stopping this abusive practice as it would be difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate every conceivable variation of a name.
Another issue involves exploiting the popularity of a famous brand name by including certain key words into a web page that are likely to be picked up in a search regardless of the relevance of these key words to the site. Savvy website proprietors have been known to strategically and purposefully interpose popular keywords into their web pages in order to increase their site's visibility and web presence by ensuring that their websites will be picked up during a search as well as paying for placement in the search engine. Thus, many searches can lead to information that has no actual direct or logical connection to the products, companies, or brands being searched.
In the United States, free speech laws prevent the system from banning people from using desired domains. Further, registering all domains that contain a certain keyword would be impractical, very costly, and would not solve the shortcoming and limitations described above.
A recent attempt to solve the shortcomings described above is a new initiative to add seven new top-level domains to the current domains (i.e., .com, .org, .net, .gov). For example, a business-oriented domain has been adopted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which is the governing body overseeing the global Internet domain name system in order to augment and expand the existing domain name system. Neulevel, Inc., the exclusive registry operator of the “.biz” top-level domain (“TLD”), is currently implementing a registration service for all business owners who wish to register their sites under this classification. Registrants must be room engaged in a commercial business as defined by the ICANN-approved registry.
Although the “.biz” solution purportedly filters out the non-business “.com” information, it can still yield vast numbers of web sites, which are incorrect and can distract the searcher from his/her search objectives. For example, a key word search for Chrysler® automobiles could yield dozens of used car dealerships, repair shops, detailers, insurers, as well as the official Chrysler® website. What is needed, therefore, is a method and system for facilitating web searching activities that overcome the limitations and disadvantages stated above.